Before a
national
television audience, President Dwight D. Eisenhower displays a nose
cone
from a Jupiter-C missile on August 7, 1957.

The Sputnik
I spacecraft.

One Small Ball in
the Air:
October
4, 1957November 3, 1957

On Friday, October 4, 1957,
U.S. domestic news was dominated by Eisenhower's decision to send
troops
to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce civil rights legislation
integrating
the schools. When Americans heard about Sputnik, some stepped outside
to look for the racing spot of light moving across the crisp autumn
sky.
Others stayed inside to watch the premiere of a comedy television
program
called Leave it to Beaver.

The Eisenhower
administration
viewed the Soviet satellite less as a military threat than as a boost
to its behind-the-scenes efforts to establish the principle of
"freedom
of space" ahead of eventual military reconnaissance satellite
launches.
Sputnik overflew international boundaries, yet it aroused no
diplomatic
protests. Four days after Sputnik's launch, on October 8, Donald
Quarles
summed up a discussion he had with Eisenhower: "the Russians have
. . . done us a good turn, unintentionally, in establishing the
concept
of freedom of international space. . . . The President then looked
ahead
. . . and asked about a reconnaissance [satellite] vehicle."22

That same day, in response
to mounting public alarm, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles sent
White House Press Secretary James Hagerty a memorandum on the
Soviet satellite.
Dulles called the Sputnik launch "an event of considerable
technical
and scientific importance," but he hastened to add that its
"importance
should not be exaggerated . . . the value of the satellite to mankind
will for a long time be highly problematical." Furthermore,
the Dulles
asserted, "the United States . . . has not neglected this field.
It already has a capability to utilize outer space for missiles and it
is expected to launch an earth satellite during the present
geophysical
year in accordance with a program that has been under orderly
development
over the past two years."23

The furor over Sputnik's
launch
took several days to build as opinion-makers struggled to interpret
the
event in the wider context of U.S. national security. Dulles's
comments
became the basis for the Eisenhower administration's response to
the Soviet
satellite. The day after Hagerty received the memorandum, on
October 9,
1957, Eisenhower faced the press for the first time since the launch.
Seeking to calm Congress and the public, he assured reporters that
Sputnik
contained "no additional threat to the United States,"
adding
that "from what [the Soviets] say, they have put one small
ball in
the air." When asked how his administration could have let the
Soviets
be first in space, Eisenhower said that "no one ever suggested to
me . . . a race except, of course, more than once we would say, well,
there is going to be a great psychological advantage in world politics
to putting the thing up, but . . . in view of the real scientific
character
of our development, there didn't seem to be a reason for just
trying to
grow hysterical about it." He added that he had provided the U.S.
satellite and missile efforts with funds "to the limit of my
ability
. . . and that is all I can do."24

Eisenhower's greatest error
in the Sputnik "crisis" was his failure to appreciate the
psychological
dimension of launching the first satellite. Far from being about
science
solely, Sputnik came to be about the way Americans saw themselves.
Many
saw Sputnik as confirmation that the Soviets had an operational ICBM,
a feat the United States, supposedly the technological leader of
the world,
could not yet match.25 The
administration's
efforts to quell fears immediately backfired. Many interpreted
Eisenhower's
statements as evidence that he was out of touch. NASA Historian Roger
Launius has summed up the (unfair) popular appraisal of Eisenhower at
the time: "A smiling incompetent . . . a 'do-nothing,'
golf-playing
president mismanaging events. . . ."26
His comments looked weak placed beside the alarmist statements
emanating
from Congress. Typical of these were comments by Democratic Senator
Richard
Russell of Georgia, chair of the Armed Services Committee: "We
now
know beyond a doubt that the Russians have the ultimate weapona
long-range missile capable of delivering atomic and hydrogen
explosives
across continents and oceans. . . ."27

Many criticized Eisenhower
for pinching pennies and making ill-informed decisions without free
debate
at the expense of national technological leadership and security.
As Aviation
Week Editor-in-Chief Robert Hotz stated in the first of a series of
scathing
post-Sputnik editorials:

We believe that the
people of this country have a right to know the facts about the
relative positions of the U.S. and the Soviet Union in this
technological
race which is perhaps the most significant event of our
times. They
have the right to find out why a nation with our vastly superior
scientific, economic, and military potential is being at the
very
least equaled and perhaps surpassed by a country that less than
two decades ago couldn't even play in the same scientific
ball park.
They also have the right to make decisions as to whether they
want
their government to maintain our current leadership of the free
world regardless of the cost in dollars and sweat. . . . They
are
not decisions to be made arbitrarily by a clique of leaders
in an
ivory tower or on a golf course.28

On the day Eisenhower faced
the media, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson received his first
post-Sputnik
briefing from the Pentagon. Johnson was entertaining friends at his
ranch
near Austin, Texas, when the Sputnik news broke. "In the Open
West
you learn to live closely with the sky," he wrote later of the
night
of October 4. "It is part of your life. But now, somehow, in some
new way, the sky seemed almost alien."29
In addition to an alien sky over the Texas hill country, Johnson
saw in
Sputnik an issue important to the nation that could advance his career
and party. According to Johnson aide Glen Wilson, Johnson launched
plans
that very night for a public investigation into the state of U.S.
satellite
and missile programs in the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee, which he
chaired.30

Eisenhower publicly
downplayed
concerns over Sputnik, but behind the scenes, he took modest steps to
counter the Soviet propaganda victory. On October 8, he had asked
outgoing
Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson to order the Army Ballistic
Missile
Agency (ABMA) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, to ready
a Jupiter-C
rocket to launch a satellite. Not until November 8, however, did
the command
reach the Redstone Arsenal and become public.31
The ABMA received authorization from the Army for two launch attempts.
Project Vanguard transferred a science instrumentJames Van
Allen's
radiation detectorfrom one of the later planned Vanguard
satellites
to the ABMA effort.

By then, the Eisenhower
administration
had twice as many reasons for launching a U.S. satellite as soon as
possible.
On November 3, 1957, Korolev's team had launched Sputnik II. The
satellite,
which included 508 kilograms (1,118 pounds) of payload, was a hastily
prepared combination of the PS-2 satellite and a life support capsule
for a dog, which was originally designed for brief sounding rocket
flights.
On board was a canine passenger named Laika.